25 November 2025
From basement floors to Olympic glory: The journey of Team Hasselborg
Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg leads a team that has literally risen from sleeping on basement floors of event organiser’s homes to standing on the golden top step of the Olympic podium.
Their Olympic success came at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games. Four years later, they added a bronze at the Beijing Games in 2022.
Now, as the 2026 Games in Cortina approach, Anna seems just as determined as ever — and she’ll do it with the same teammates who started this journey a decade ago.
Looking back, Hasselborg recalled, “We put this team together in 2015 with the biggest goal of representing Sweden in 2018. We knew we had Margaretha Sigfridsson ahead of us [as Sweden’s women’s team].
“We called ourselves our ‘dream team’ and we really believed we were capable of getting selected. We knew we had a very short period of time but we had all our goals laid out.”
Sacrifices and struggles
She continued, “With Sweden there were no play-downs for the Olympics, so we had to be well ahead of Margaretha because they were the Olympic-funded team at that time. We knew we had to play our way into the national squad.”
“We had no funding — no money at all, so we just played a lot and hopefully would win so we could pay our way. For example, we went to a competition in Canada where we knew we wouldn’t be able to pay our bills if we didn’t qualify.”
“All four of us stayed in one room because that was all we could afford. We would call organising committees to ask if we could sleep in a basement of someone’s house.”
She also added, “We even borrowed money from my dad,” quickly pointing out — “which we’ve paid back!”
Reflecting on those times, Anna said, “It was a grind but I think that was what made our team such a strong unit at that time. We are very thankful to a lot of people, and it was such a fun ride looking back at it.”
Setting the bar high
One key point that Anna makes about her team at that time is that they did not want to be selected for the sake of being selected.
She said, “Looking back at it, the stars were aligned and everything was perfect. But we did say when we came into the 2017–2018 season, we really wanted to be top three in the rankings. We didn’t want to go to the Olympics and not feel like a medal-contending team.”
As the saying goes, the rest is history. Team Hasselborg made top three of the rankings and then delivered gold in PyeongChang.
”We had a really great week. We managed to play well and enjoy ourselves — we really had fun. The way we communicated and how tight our group was really helped.”
Life after gold
So… that was then. Fast-forward to today, things look a little different.
“Things have changed,” Anna said, “There are a lot of kids — five and counting.”
Examining the changes of the last few years, she explained, “I think we all came out of COVID with motivation.
“We realised that what we loved doing was being around each other and playing a lot in tournaments. So that was a consideration.”
In the middle of Team Hasselborg’s transition, they won bronze at the Beijing 2022 Games.
“I’m very proud of our 2022 Olympics. I struggled a bit because of being away from the children for a long time.”
“After 2022 we said that we mentally needed to take a break but try to keep our top ranking still”.
So, a conscious decision to take their foot off the gas, re-charge and come back fighting again.
Watch this space
Anna gives a progress report as she and her team look towards Milano Cortina 2026.
“I really like what we’re doing right now and we’re super hungry again. Everything right now is going according to plan”.
And we all know what happened the last time Team Hasselborg “had a plan”…
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